I will start by admitting that I know nothing about this except that someone suggested a start a thread about Sodexo, Newton’s new (I think) school lunch vendor? So, go for it?
How do your kids (or you feel) about Sodexo?
by Greg Reibman | Jan 12, 2017 | Schools | 17 comments
I know zero about them, so thanks to Google I copy this from their website:
“Sodexo improves Quality of Life by:
Ensuring the people that we serve — corporate and government employees, healthcare patients and providers, students and faculty, sports and leisure venue attendees, retirees and more — have access to nutritious meals.
Creating healthy and productive environments for businesses, government agencies, hospitals, schools, retirement communities and other venues.
Helping people live a healthy lifestyle. Sodexo offers an array of programs that help them enjoy healthier lifestyles, such as our award-winning Mindful program.
Contributing to the economic, social and environmental developmentof the communities where we operate.”
Are they all meals for all people? I hope they don’t serve soylent green!
I’ve heard mixed reviews but I don’t have kids just yet. This topic has been brought up around the debate on whether to outsource the jobs of the custodians. Among those advocates who believe we should not outsource (I am one of them), there’s a sense that the outsourcing of the food workers hasn’t gone well.
At this point the issue of Sodexo and outsourcing are separate. Sodexo has been terrific in terms of accommodating special needs and services for students. I’ve not had a lunch at school, but people seem to be happy with the quality of lunches.
As for outsourcing of custodial services, my colleagues overwhelmingly oppose it. My concern is that parents aren’t aware that this is even in the works. The custodians are my colleagues and are as much a part of the smooth running of a school as every other department.
I’ve been assured that educational services would never be outsourced. Anyone who believes that needs to read about Betsy deVos, the recommended appointment for the Department of Education. She believes is providing vouchers paid for by taxpayers to students who are already enrolled in private schools and has had a significant part in destroying the Detroit public schools system. She doesn’t believe that charter schools, funded with taxpayer money, should receive the same oversight as public schools. This has been the overall direction of public education for over 15 years, unbeknownst to parents whose children are in the school system.
Massachusetts overwhelmingly defeated Ballot Question #2 , but we need to remain vigilant in an era when public educators in pubic schools are under attack at the state and federal level.
One perspective: my first grader, who’s at Mason Rice, recently said “the pizza stinks.”
We allow her to buy lunch once a week on pizza day. She’s typically fine with any kind of cheese pizza from anywhere. Many, many children (and adults I think) would just eat pizza all the time if allowed to do so, and doctors weren’t allowed to talk or write anything.
So this was an unusual comment.
All I know is that my middle-schooler, who bought lunch almost all the time last year, now brings his lunch. (And he concurs that the pizza is particularly egregious.)
I have kids at all 3 levels, Burr Elementary, Day Middle and Newton North, and 2 out of the 3 report the food is “gross”. My middle schooler eats the the lunches, but he is probably the least picky out of the 3. My youngest reports that the pizza is particularly disgusting. (In previous years it was Papa Ginos, and this year it is made in house, so that may be the problem.)
My daughter attends Angier and last year in the new building the meals were fresh and made in house.
Starting in September they had the old trucked in food and my daughter HATED the food! One example of this is last year they had chicken and waffles with housemade chicken and waffles! This past fall, my daughter reported in that the waffles came prewrapped in plastic (each kid had a plastic bag to unwrap).
After a few months, the cooking is back at Angier but the food is not as good as last year. The variety is good however the homemade pizza isn’t as good as last year and the fresh fruit is still yucky by the end of the week. The meals at Angier have included stir fries and other meals instead of pizza, chicken nuggets and grilled cheese, which I applaud.
AND the payment system went HAYWIRE this week, sending out a “sorry” for sending you an email that had the wrong information . . . . I never received the original wrong email, but I received the SORRY email every 15 minutes for HOURS. I had a least 20 of them in my email box.
Again, the payment system in September had many kinks.
However, if NPS is going to build school with full kitchens, then the food service contract should contain the proper language for the food service to use full kitchen from the start of the year.
Six years ago Newton stopped doing food service in house and retained Whitsons on a three-year contract. Whitsons was renewed once but Sodexo won the latest contract in a competitive bid situation. While Sodexo is new here and is still working some of the bugs out, their presence and that of Whitsons before them has been a tremendous positive for our students.
Specifically, the quality, variety and healthiness of full meals and a la carte food options is way up, along with the number of students who choose to participate in our school lunch program. Our food vendors have been responsive, flexible and fast regarding taking suggestions and making improvements that come from students and parents. All this, along with unionized employees at both Whitsons and Sodexo, and the cost of meals has still remained low.
What else happened when we hired an outside food service? We are no longer spending $1 million more that we take in each year on our meal program. Sodexo and Whitsons before them have been break-even leaving NPS with $1 million more annually to spend on our core mission, teaching our kids.
If Newton students and parents have specific issues with Sodexo’s food service we want to hear about this. But to date the net response to Sodexo has been very positive.
Since switching to an outside vendor we have saved over $10M. My best guess is $15M. About 10 years ago, SC member Reenie Murphy spearheaded the effort. I have been critical of her, as I have been critical of all school committee members. In retrospect, I was too critical of Reenie. I apologize. In fact, she deserves a standing ovation. Many past SC members can’t point to a single specific accomplishment. She can. Thanks to Reenie, NPS has been able to afford an additional 300 teachers in classrooms over the last decade.
I hope that the current SC can show courage and leadership in putting the health and well-being of students first by adopting a post 8:30 AM high school start. In doing so, we will also owe them a big thank-you. Courage and leadership are needed, since the SC can’t make everyone happy. We need to focus on the children’s health first. What is more important than our children’s health?
Last, back to school lunches. Has anyone on the school committee ever eaten a Sodexo school lunch? Why not invite parents to try school lunch options at a school committee meeting?
I’ve been hearing generally positive reports from my elementary and high schoolers, who usually buy lunch on Thursdays.
SC Member Seigel – yes the comment above leads me to ask: how can a parent see for him/herself how the lunches are? I have often wondered this.
My seven-year-old is very smart but still some ground-truthing of her feedback probably is probably worthwhile. Thank you for your service to the Schools and City!
Shawn
I can’t really think of any food experience worse than my k-12 cafeteria food (made in-house in an NH public school many moons ago).
I do have fond memories of the Sodexo caf at my college, but after I graduated they got dinged for health code violations, and had to redo everything.
My kids like it. Definitely prefer the caf over what we prepare for them. The Sodexo workers work hard too, many immigrants and others left behind by high tech and local retail. My cousin works for them and said the benefits are good if they assign enough hours.
Kids are picky eaters. For 5 years I packed a peanut butter sandwich for one of my sons because that was all he’d eat for lunch. He never would’ve eaten anything from any food service provider.
The school lunch program should be evaluated with a set of metrics. Are the lunches healthy, nutritious? Are there a variety of choices? Etc, etc.
The RFP for school lunch was pretty extensive and detailed. In addition, Sodexo must follow the national school lunch program regulations and guidelines from the USDA on calorie counts, portion size and the types of foods offered.
So there are many regulations and metrics in place – https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp/national-school-lunch-program-nslp
Sodexo’s focus is on mass production, not quality and care. I’m disappointed Newton chose to use this vendor to play such an important role in our community. I am an elementary school parent.
My kid ate a purchased lunch happily every day he could for the last three years under Witsons (sp?). In kindergarten he didn’t want a packed lunch on his full days, even though it would have been easier on my brain to pack 5 days/week.
Last month he came to me and said that he needed a packed lunch again. The one time I’ve forgotten he bought “an orange & some milk.”
This kid eats everything. From the kid staples of cheese pizza & pasta with red sauce, to thai fresh rolls with shrimp and basil, kale, okra, any kind of fish or crab; beef and chicken (and their more exotic counterparts of goat, lamb, mutton, and duck). We haven’t found a cuisine or food he won’t try, and he eats massive quantities. But he WON’T EAT Sodexho.
Guess I’m packing brown-bags for two.
As a side note, the offerings for the NECP/Ed center are really disappointing. The same thing every week, boxed, etc. I tried to arrange to have milk delivered for my pre-schooler there (because milk isn’t in the box), and it failed miserably. The sign up-page only lets you pick which days, and once you’ve picked they send lunches FOREVER (it took more than one call to make them stop, and there’s no way to submit a stop request, or a request for specific days at the site)